THE ROAD TOWARDS FULLY CIRCULAR POLYOLEFINS Elisabeth Skoda speaks to Trevor Davis, Head of Marketing Consumer Products at Borealis, to discuss strategies and ways forward to address the most pressing sustainability issues of today.
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olyolefin provider Borealis set itself the ambitious goal to achieve a truly circular economy by combining different technologies in a complementary and cascading way through R&D and collaborations across the value chain. As a recent example, the company announced a partnership with Renasci N.V., a provider recycling solutions who created the novel Smart Chain Processing (SCP) concept. This concept is a proprietary method of maximizing material recovery in order to achieve zero waste and enables the processing of multiple waste streams using different recycling technologies under one roof. Mixed waste – plastics, metals, and biomass – is automatically selected and sorted multiple times. After sorting, plastic waste is first mechanically recycled, and then in a second step any remaining material is chemically recycled into circular pyrolysis oil and lighter product fractions, which are used to fuel the process. He identifies the core challenge around sustainability as finding solutions that address all aspects of the problem, not just a part of it, but is confident that Borealis is on the right track to helping with finding these solutions. “I speak daily with brand owners and converters who are passionately working on sustainability. The value chain faces a difficult task to find solutions that tackle both the waste and CO2 challenges at speed and scale. But sustainability and circularity are woven throughout the Borealis strategy. We are simultaneously focused on the sustainability of our own operations as we develop our circular portfolio of products. We are committed to growing our circular portfolio including renewables to address CO2, chemical recycling to address plastic waste, and advanced mechanical recycling which covers both waste and CO2.”
Focus on R&D Packaging R&D plays a crucial role at Borealis, and the company works hard on ensuring that every solution fulfils strict sustainability criteria.
“Each innovation for the Consumer Products team is reviewed through an intense sustainability analysis as part of our development process. We are also heavily focused on innovating to improve and expand our circular portfolio while offering products globally as we expand into North America and work with Borouge in the Middle East and Asia. Design for recycling is a key innovation pillar with our existing mono-material 100% full polyethylene (PE) and polypropylene (PP) solutions. In short, sustainability is the present and future for Consumer Products as we offer packaging solutions that make everyday life easier.” In 2020, the company launched five products in the area of the Bornewables™, a portfolio of circular polyolefin products manufactured with renewable feedstocks, described as offering the same material performance as virgin polyolefins while being decoupled from fossil-based feedstock, and also Borcycle™ M for advanced mechanical recycling. “In 2021, we have even bigger plans for Consumer Products with additional launches in the area of the Bornewables, Borcycle™ C chemical recycling and Borcycle M advanced mechanical recycling,” adds Mr Davis.
Collaborations Borealis works in collaboration with partners across the value chain to deliver new solutions. A notable example is a prototype food packaging made with 100% recycled raw materials (a Packaging Europe Sustainability Awards finalist), and a new closure made of post-consumer recycled resin in collaboration with Menshen. This came with its own set of challenges, but ultimately yielded valuable insights for the company. “One challenge we faced when launching products using mechanically recycled and renewable materials was ensuring that we had the right feed-
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